Results are shameful but tests miss the true point of learning

Tuesday 4 August 2009 13:22 BST

More than 100,000 children cannot read and write properly after six years in state primary schools. The Tories say this proves that the Government's policies have failed but Diana Johnson, the new schools minister, thinks we should not be overly alarmed.

Children who achieve Level 3 but miss the target Level 4 can still read "and enjoy" Harry Potter, she points out. But by the Government's own reckoning, these children cannot be certain to "get the point" of the text they are reading. Nor can they "read between the lines" or "choose words for effect". Children who begin secondary education lacking such skills will struggle.

Overwhelmingly, it is working-class boys who fall behind and reject education. These are the same 11-year-olds who grow up to be violent and disruptive teenagers and populate Britain's jails as adults. But it is far from clear that the Sats results which have such a major influence on children's lives are even fair. It seems that the English tests could be biased against boys, with one expert claiming markers favour the longer answers that girls tend to provide.

Headteachers believe many of this year's grades are inaccurate and thousands of papers have already been sent back for re-marking. Research suggests up to half of marks in English tests could be wrong every year, fuelling fears that improvements in standards since 1997 may have been overstated.

But the critics and advocates of the Government's record on raising standards all miss the point. The biggest problem with national curriculum tests, as they are formally known, is not that the results may be inaccurate, as head teachers claim, or that thousands of children fail them. Over the past decade, these tests have undermined what should be the real purpose of primary education.

Harried by a ministry that remains obsessed with targets, teachers across the land have drilled pupils to pass their Sats at all costs. Specifically, results have risen at the expense of giving pupils a rounded education.

Too many primary school children never know what it means to love learning, with catastrophic implications for the rest of their lives.